Poe v. Ullman

Appellant
Paul and Pauline Poe, et al.
Appellee
Ullman, State's Attorney
Appellant's Claim
A statute written in 1879 in the state of Connecticut prohibited the use of contraceptives to prevent pregnancy and also prohibited physicians from prescribing and advising the use of contraceptives. Paul and Pauline Poe, Mrs. JaneDoe, and Doctor C. Lee Buxton challenged the constitutionality of this statute, claiming that it interfered with their right to privacy and violated their liberties protected by due process as guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
Chief Lawyer for Appellant
Fowler W. Harper
Chief Lawyer for Appellee
Raymond J. Cannon
Justices for the Court
William J. Brennan, Jr., Tom C. Clark, Felix Frankfurter (writing for the Court), Earl Warren, Charles Evans Whittaker
Justices Dissenting
Hugo Lafayette Black, William O. Douglas, John Marshall Harlan II, Potter Stewart
Place
Washington, D.C.
Date of Decision
19 June 1961
Decision
In a 5-4 decision, the Court dismissed the case with no determination upon the constitutionality of the Connecticut anti-contraceptive statute.
Significance
This case examined the constitutionality of a Connecticut statute which prohibited the dissemination and use of contraceptives and which was prosecutableby the state. The Court was required to determine if this statute violated the right to privacy guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment and the liberty protected by due process of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Ultimately the Supreme Court dismissed the case, finding that it involved only a threatened and not actual application of the state statute, and finding no applicable immediacy or injury which deemed it necessary to make a ruling on constitutionality.
Justiciability of the Claim
An 1879 state of Connecticut statute prohibited advising use of contraceptivedevices and the actual use of contraceptives to prevent pregnancy, includinguse by married couples. Research of the succeeding years indicated that thisstatute had been enacted once in 1940, charging a physician and two nurses with operating a birth-control clinic (State v. Nelson). In 1960 Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc., on behalf of the appellants--Paul and Pauline Poe, Jane Doe, and Dr. C. Lee Buxton--prepared a case which challenged the constitutionality of this statute, making the claim that it violatedthe appellants' right to privacy and violated their liberties protected andguaranteed by the Constitution of the United States.
Both Pauline Poe and Jane Doe experienced pregnancies that resulted in children who did not live past birth due to congenital abnormalities, near-death illness, and felt extreme mental anguish upon the termination of the pregnancies. Their physician, in both cases, Dr. C. Lee Buxton, advised them that further pregnancies would end similarly, and in Mrs. Doe's case her probable death. He advised that the best prevention of further difficulties was some methodof contraception. However, the Connecticut law prohibited Dr. Buxton from disseminating prescriptions or advice about contraceptive methods to either ofthese women on the grounds that it could result in criminal prosecution. Theonly recourse would be for the married couples to abstain from intimate relations in order to prevent pregnancy.
Poe v. Ullman was first heard in the Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut where the complaint was dismissed. The appellants then requested a declaratory judgment from the U.S. Supreme Court, which would formally make the statute unconstitutional. The two claims were, first, that by invoking the anti-contraceptive law, the married couples were denied the right to make decisions about the most intimate and private parts of their lives. Secondly it wasstated that the threat of prosecution for the private use of contraceptivesdeprived them of the protection of due process under the law. Buxton also claimed that the Connecticut law prohibiting him from giving sound and safe advice to his patients denied him the right of due process of practicing his profession and earning a living based on his training as a physician.
In a 5-4 decision, Justice Frankfurter, delivering the opinion of the Court,dismissed the case. He wrote that the case before them did not clearly indicate a direct threat of prosecution by the state's attorney if the appellants acquired and used contraceptive devices. In the course of research the Court found that contraceptives were readily available in Connecticut drug stores, and yet there had been no prosecutions in that state for the sale of these items. Frankfurter went on to write that law enforcement officials were more likely to notice the open, public sales of contraceptives than the use of contraceptives in the privacy of the appellants' homes. It was the opinion of the majority that Poe v. Ullman had no sense of urgency nor a real and direct injury to the appellants, which are the basis for the justification of a case.
Defining the Right to Privacy
Justices Douglas and Harlan had a dissenting view of Poe v. Ullman. They wrote that the opinion of the majority left the appellants open to prosecution by an unconstitutional law. Both justices felt that the constitutionality of the Connecticut anti-contraceptive law should be thoroughly examined bythe Court. They cited the Court's inclination to dismiss the case as trivialand lacking in substantive support and precedents as being a grave injusticeto the Poes, Mrs. Doe, and Dr. Buxton. In looking at the arguments and evidence brought before the Court, both Douglas and Harlan shared the opinion thatthis case did involve constitutional decisions.
The heart of the dissenting opinion revolved around the definition of "the right to privacy." Douglas and Harlan questioned the state of Connecticut's authority to invade the bedroom of a married couple and examine the private andintimate relationship between spouses. Harlan wrote in his opinion,

I consider that this Connecticut legislation, as construed to apply to these appellants, violates the Fourteenth Amendment. I believe that a statute making it a criminal offense for married couples to use contraceptives is an intolerable and unjustifiable invasion of privacy in the conduct of the most intimate concerns of an individual's personal life.

Douglas and Harlan agreed that the only barrier between the appellants and prosecution was the "whim of the prosecutor." While the state might not physically invade thehome, the concept of protection from illegal search and seizure of personal property was much broader in scope, protecting the spiritual nature of privacyas well as the physical.
In 1965 the Supreme Court was faced with another case with the same issue ofthe constitutionality of anti-contraceptive laws for married couples in Griswold v. Connecticut. Unlike the dismissal of Poe v. Ullman the Supreme Court concluded in a 7-2 decision that the statute did violate the right to privacy. The right to privacy was viewed as a constitutional principleguaranteed by the Fourth, Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, and fully protected by the Constitution.
Impact
With the dismissal of Poe v. Ullman and the dissenting opinions, the right to privacy came under closer scrutiny by the Supreme Court. The justicesbegan to define this principle in greater detail; instead of right to privacy law only covering only the unlawful invasion of a property, it began to reflect protection needed during the unlawful invasion into the private and personal relationships of the lives of Americans. Future Court decisions would reflect back on Poe v. Ullman, and use it as a defining moment and precedent for the guaranteed right of privacy.
Related Cases

• Tileston v. Ullman, 318 U.S. 44 (1943).
  
• Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965).
  
• Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973).